The mirror sea that imitates our insides,
sprays and froths, canine, rabies-shaken.
In the cathedrals, churches, and temples,
people pray, “Oh give us glass calm, glass calm
and cool heads layered over with freshwater,”
because the mirror sea does more than reflect—
The mirror sea enacts, and these are rabid days
when men and women get themselves bitten
to death for less than cutting their eyes
in the wrong direction. The mirror sea
strengthens its undertow. Plenty dumb kids
get hit with pebbles when it sucks them in deeper
than they’d intended, into the shrapnel
it strafes at the beach with long-shore drift.
If the earth then takes them kids, people rally
on Front Street, demand their leaders push back the sea—
so the mirror sea rallies and wets Front Street,
pushes the people, leaders and all, inside.
•••
Chris Astwood is a Bermudian poet, currently working towards his PhD in Critical and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. His poetry has been published in online and print journals including Iota, Other Poetry, and The Caribbean Writer.
tongues of the ocean 